II. The
Asserted Claims of the Patents-in-Suit Are Patent-Ineligible
Under 35 U.S.C. § 101

"Whoever
invents or discovers any new and useful process, machine,
manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful
improvement thereof, may obtain a patent therefor, subject to
the conditions and requirements of" Title 35 of the
United States Code. 35 U.S.C. § 101. "The Supreme
Court, however, has long interpreted § 101 and its
statutory predecessors to contain an implicit exception: laws
of nature, natural phenomena, and abstract ideas are not
patentable." Content Extraction & Transmission
LLC v. Wells Fargo Bank, Nat'l Ass'n, 776 F.3d
1343, 1346 (Fed. Cir. 2014) (internal quotation marks and
citation omitted).

claim falls outside § 101 where (1) it is "directed
to" a patent-ineligible concept, i.e., a law of
nature, natural phenomenon, or abstract idea, and (2)[] if
so, the particular elements of the claim, considered
"both individually and 'as an ordered combination,
'" do not add enough to "'transform the
nature of the claim' into a patent-eligible
application."

The
Patents-in-Suit "tackle" various "problems
that had proven intractable to the [mass] transit
sector." Appellant's Br. 17 (discussing the '003
and '617 patents); see id. at 24 (discussing
similarly the '390 and '816 patents). SSI sought to
overcome these problems with inventions designed to implement
open-payment fare systems in mass transit networks in the
United States. See SSI, 2015 WL 4184486, at *1.
"An open-payment fare system allows riders to
conveniently and quickly access mass transit by using
existing bankcards, " such as debit and credit cards,
thereby "eliminat[ing] the need for, and added
operational cost of, dedicated fare-cards, " paper
tickets, and tokens. Id.; see, e.g.,
'003 patent, Abstract.

Entitled
"Learning Fare Collection System For Mass. Transit,
" the '003 and '617 patents generally relate to
"a system and method for regulating entry in a transit
system using information from a bankcard, such as a credit
card or debit card." '003 patent, Abstract;
see '617 patent, Abstract (similar). Entitled
"Public Transit System Fare Processor For Multi-Balance
Funding, " the '816 and '390 patents generally
relate to "a system and method for processing transfer
rides associated with at least one public transit network,
" which "preprocess transactions to consolidate or
eliminate unnecessary transactions with a financial
institution clearing and settlement network." '816
patent, Abstract; '390 patent, Abstract
(same).[6]

Consistent
with the District Court, we treat the following claims from
each of the Patents-in-Suit as representative of their
content.[7]SSI, 2015 WL 4184486, at *4;
see Elec. Power, 830 F.3d at 1352.

Claim
14 of the '003 patent recites:

A method for validating entry into a first transit system
using a bankcard terminal, the method comprising:

downloading, from a processing system associated with a set
of transit systems including the first transit system, a set
of bankcard records comprising, for each bankcard record in
the set, an identifier of a bankcard previously registered
with the processing system, and wherein the set of bankcard
records identifies bankcards from a plurality of issuers;

receiving, from a bankcard reader, bankcard data comprising
data from a bankcard currently presented by a holder of the
bankcard, wherein the bankcard comprises one of a credit card
and a debit card; determining an identifier based on at least
part of the bankcard data from the currently presented
bankcard;

determining whether the currently presented bankcard is
contained in the set of bankcard records;

verifying the currently presented bankcard with a bankcard
verification system, if the bankcard was not contained in the
set of bankcard records; and

denying access, if the act of verifying the currently
presented bankcard with the bankcard verification system
results in a determination of an invalid bankcard.

'003 patent col. 15 l. 50-col. 16 l. 6.

Claim
13 of the '617 patent recites:

A method for validating entry into a first transit system
using a bankcard terminal, the method comprising:

downloading, from a processing system associated with a set
of transit systems including the first transit system, a list
of bankcards comprising, for each bankcard in the list, a
hash identifier of a bankcard previously presented, by a
respective holder of the bankcard, to the processing system,
wherein the bankcard comprises one of a credit card and a
debit card;

receiving, from a bankcard reader, bankcard data comprising
data from a bankcard currently presented by a holder of the
bankcard;

generating a hash identifier based on the bankcard data from
the currently presented bankcard, wherein the hash identifier
comprises a hash of at least part of the bankcard data;
determining whether the currently presented bankcard is
contained in the list of bankcards;

verifying the currently presented bankcard with a bankcard
verification system, if the bankcard was not contained in the
list of bankcards; and

denying access, if the act of verifying the currently
presented bankcard with the bankcard verification system
results in a determination of an invalid bankcard.

'617 patent col. 11 l. 62-col. 12 l. 18.

Claim 1
of the '816 patent recites:

A method of funding transit rides associated with at least
one public transit network, from a plurality of funding
sources, the method comprising:

configuring a processor, associated with the at least one
public transit network, wherein configuring the ...

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